FootprintsintheWind.com

People have wonderful ideas and perspectives. what we have traditionally lacked is a forum where those ideas can be developed and those perspectives interwoven in complex ways to match the complexity of our world.

:- Doug.

Frustration leads us to want the quick fix—frustration with the complexity of our times, frustration with our perceived inability to get our voice heard, frustration with how deeply entrenched our problems are. Not only are our problems out there, but we expect “the leaders” to “solve” them, whatever those terms might mean.

So, because negotiations pay no attention to the clock and peace pays no attention to the calendar, we grow frustrated and thing of force. In our communities, this scales down to shutting off conversation and our personal duty to engage our imaginations—in favor of government or leaders or experts—a use of paid-for force.

Instead, we could engage and own our future.

:- Doug.

Incubation cannot be sped.

:- Doug.

How will people believe me?
They will have dreams.
Listen to their dreams.

:- Doug.

We are teasing ourselves with the notion we can solve all the world’s troubles in two hours.

:- Doug.

It’s an old thought to say
To go fast row slowly
But perhaps nearly so old is
The best—wine, cheese, friends—
leave time untouched

:- Doug.

How to get to the future
Let it fall on us
Stumble into it
Delude ourselves that we can manage it
Imagine

:- Doug.

Is our penchant for speed slowing us?

:- Doug.

If we took more time, could we get there faster?

:- Doug.

In our board meeting yesterday we started thinking of things in a new way, and the conversation deepened, then we got to the muddle, or the whirlwind, but no resolution. That’s what we want, isn’t it, resolution? We want to get to an answer and stop being bothered about whatever our issue is and get on to what we think is peace—being left alone, sitting alone under our date tree.

But life is more, and work on our projects calls for more from us than just a couple of hours. Can we not give up a few hours to make a better world?

:- Doug.

We cannot manage evolution. Managing applies the old to the old. But we can imagine. We can transform. It’s the only way we get somewhere new.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 814

Relax and simply give
what you have to give
where you are
this moment
still seeking to give
the largest effect you can

Please pass it on.

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Ask for help: invite relationship.

In an evocative personal correspondence, Cheryl Honey writes “Asking people for help is a great way to expand relationships!”

Asking for help is a way to be human and make available the relationship field. This is going Star Trek one better: they could raise and lower their shields: humans can extend meeting fields. There are killing fields, there were before them meeting fields. Exchange your shield for our field. Create the field with us.

Inviting relationship is more than saying Hi. It is being vulnerable, risking a part of yourself to face another. This is beyond what Buber told us: his sounds a little like the beginning of a wrestling match. This is more an uncovering of a wound and asking for care, or the producing of an egg and asking for an incubator. It has the possibility of possibilities, of creativity or destruction, of acceptance or rejection or worse, ignoring. It is risking all possibility. So meeting someone for the first time, to be true meeting, needs to involve at least one of the persons extending vulnerability.

Asking for help is therefore innately more powerful than sharing an idea or a business card. It is not pushing, nor even pulling, but putting at mercy. Telling my story, my fascination, is not as inviting as seeking help, demonstrating human need. We are drawn as water downhill to the person who needs, and particularly the one who needs us.

This is not to say that asking for help will always draw help. It may draw disdain and pushing away. These are not the people we want at this time; maybe later their views and attitudes will change. Then the invitation may still be open, or a newer one extended, and we shall then be allies.

If there be conflict, this is good. Life demands conflict—consult any excellent novel. Life needs opposition. The key is to make the opposition constructive—just because we don’t agree doesn’t mean we will not produce good work together. Opposers can turn to put opposite shoulders to the same plow.

Invite relationship: ask for help.

You are not talking about Its but about a specific human being and a shareable human need.

:- Doug.

To seek power is to obtain its lack.

:- Doug.

Goals lead to power—specifically, you sense that you want power, that is, goals increase your sense of inadequacy, of incompleteness, of.

:- Doug.